Dragon Preoccupation
by Backroads
Summary: That kid's always running off after training, fiddling with something. He can't be up to anything that bad. Can he?


Gobber was the kind of person who liked to trust people. He was not prone to suspicion, and while the more paranoid citizens of the village liked to cling to the beliefs that everyone who was not yet up to something soon would be he figured his way worked just as well. At least it made him worry less.

And while having an apprentice did require some level of supervision on his part the passing years into Hiccup's adolescence had allowed him to worry even less about whatever Hiccup was doing. Some of the crazy inventions could be… annoying. But there was nothing truly harmful going on and Gobber figured it was part of the creative and learning processes. Just as long as Hiccup didn't set the place on fire. He was a good kid at heart, talented, interested in fighting dragons as much as any other kid in the village. Gobber had no reason to ever wonder too much about what went through the boy's head.

It wasn't like he was ever officially told by Stoick to keep a close eye on Hiccup during that expedition to once again search out the dragon nest.

And he didn't need to be at the shop the whole time.

Still… the boy did get a little odd after those ships left. But teenagers were odd. And odd teenagers did odd things. In fact, Gobber had spent the past few years trying to ignore all the odd things Hiccup did at the forge. He had become very good at ignoring odd things.

Besides, with luck and the blessings of the gods, odd things could eventually become good. Once again, the processes of creativity and learning and all of that. Could those not be used to eventually get Hiccup to make something sane and useful?

And Hiccup hadn't fit in well with the other kids for some years. So what if he ran off to do whatever loners did the moment morning training ended? So what if he said he was going home and then obviously run off to the forge to fiddle with materials he had never asked to borrow?

But Gobber refused to get suspicious or even all that curious.

Though the moments of curiosity happened. Drawings of dragons all over the desk. Now every other kid in the village was more than preoccupied with dragons and that wonder had only increased since Stoick's declaration of destroying the dragon nest. But Hiccup was taking the dragon drawings to an art form. No, not art form.

The drawings were almost like… design plans. Plans to build something. But that couldn't be. Even if Gobber had taught Hiccup about sketching out designs, making measurements, putting things to scale… any similarity between the weird dragon drawings and standard blacksmith designs were simply because the style is what Hiccup knew. That was it.

Though the pictures of what Gobber did not want to swear were dragon-like tailfins were a little… strange.

No, not strange. Natural. Such sketches could only be the natural result of a kid like Hiccup finally being allowed into training. Excitement. Yes, excitement tended to make the imagination go wild. Gobber could accept that. Now Stoick would go crazy over it. He'd make up some paranoia about how Hiccup was up to something, ready to cause another disaster. Gobber wasn't like that.

He still was annoyed by the missing materials. So Hiccup was up to something, with materials and ore vanishing little by little every day. One of these days he was going to have to enforce an official allowance of what Hiccup could and could not take for his pet projects. One of these days. Sadly it had been "one of these days " for years now. His own fault. Yes, he was annoyed. Angry? Not really.

He sure would have liked to know why Hiccup was building a saddle. A saddle, of all things. The plans for it had been right there on the desk. Gobber thought about asking, but it was impossible to stop the boy when he was intent on running off somewhere and that seemed to be the constant way of things. And when it wasn't, well, Gobber kind of forgot about it.

But what harm could there be in whatever Hiccup was doing? They didn't keep horses, but hey, if he wanted to build a saddle, who was Gobber to stop him?

Until Gobber saw the saddle.

It was late one afternoon. Gobber was making his way to the forge to fix a hammer Tuffnut had all but destroyed during practice and Hiccup was making his way out of the forge.

Carrying that blasted saddle.

They nearly bumped into each other at the entrance. The saddle was about as big as Hiccup and it took both of his arms to carry the cumbersome thing.

They both stopped and stared at each other. Gobber could not shake the feeling that he had walked into something very awkward.

"Hi," he said. "Good practice this morning."

Hiccup nodded after a long pause. "Yeah. Thanks."

Painfully long moments crawled by.

Hiccup glanced down at the saddle. "This is… something."

"Oh. Nice." What would Stoick thing of it?

"I got to go." And with that Hiccup ran off, all but tripping over the large thing he was carrying.

Gobber watched him go. Something was not quite right about this situation. But what could he be up to? It was probably nothing. Hiccup had always been a little weird. Ah, well. As long as Stoick didn't find out anything about it and overreact.

He continued into the forge.

_The End._


End file.
